Contents like images and music have long been distributed by content distribution services over media such as television. Some of these content distribution services are chargeable; others are offered free of charge to subscribers, with advertisement information such as commercials inserted into contents so that advertising or sponsoring fees are obtained from commercial sponsors.
Such advertising or sponsoring fees either make up business income for content providers or cover their expenses for producing contents. The sponsors generally include diverse enterprises and business entities which offer on a chargeable basis household electrical appliances, industrial goods, and other products as well as varieties of services. Having advertisement information such as commercials inserted into contents helps to draw more customers to the products and services marketed by commercial sponsors. The advertising campaign allows the sponsors to recoup benefits that will justify their expenditure on the advertisements. Although content subscribers enjoy distributed contents apparently free of charge, they may be regarded in fact as paying for the privilege by watching the advertisement information. This type of advertising business model has already found its way throughout the broadcasting and publishing industries as well as into diverse content distribution services.
Under these circumstances, there exist certain linkages between subscribers, commercial sponsors, and content providers. That is, commercial sponsors get content providers to insert advertisement information prepared to attract subscribers' interest into contents. This promotes consumption of the advertised products and services, boosting the revenues of the commercial sponsors. The sponsors pay the advertising fees, expecting to derive further income and expansion of their business from the expenditure. With their earnings thus increased, the content providers expend more in producing better contents. This advertising business model works on the assumption that advertisement information inserted into contents is actually effective.
In other words, attaching ineffective advertisement information to contents yields few benefits for the subscribers, commercial sponsors, or content providers.
Recent innovations and advances in data processing and telecommunication technologies have prompted a significant evolution of content distribution services. Traditionally, the so-called push-type content distribution services such as TV and radio broadcasting were the norm. Lately, however, pull-type content distribution services such as those utilizing wide-area networks including the Internet are gradually gaining widespread acceptance.
Illustratively, over a TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) network like the Internet, there exist information-providing spaces exemplified by the WWW (World Wide Web). In such a setup, resource identification information in URL (Uniform Resource Locator) format is used to search through the information-filled space for gaining access to desired information resources described in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) format. Information resources of that type are viewed as home pages by the party called clients activating a WWW browser. In that setup, content providers superpose their advertisement information as “banner ads” on the home pages they run to gain advertising revenues.
Today, as network circuits such as telephone lines (asymmetric digital subscriber lines known as ADSL) and cable TV networks are getting faster in data transmission, the business prospects for image content distribution services handling moving pictures such as movies, animation films, and live broadcasts are brightening up.
One promising development is the so-called streaming technology that is starting to gain widespread use. The technology involves allowing a user to playback files even as they are being downloaded, not after completion of the download. Content distribution by streaming is considered to be the key to next-generation Internet usages. At present, well-known content distribution systems implementing the streaming technology include “RealSystem G2” and “Windows Media Technologies.”
These image content distribution services are also receptive to the advertising business model. That is, advertisement information is inserted into contents so that it may be distributed at a very low cost or free of charge to far more subscribers than in the case that the contents are chargeable. This can constitute a business that benefits three parties: subscribers, content providers, and commercial sponsors. As mentioned, however, the business presupposes that advertisement information attached to contents is significantly effective.
Pull-type content-providing businesses such as Internet-based content distribution services can personalize or customize advertisement information for each subscriber before inserting the information into contents for distribution to the subscribers.
Generally, advertisement information to be distributed is selected on the basis of individual subscribers' profiles, tastes and preferences so that the subscribers are better satisfied. Typically, a content distribution system including subscribers, content providers, and commercial sponsors is organized in such a manner that in selecting specific advertisement information to be used, each of the three parties involved may have their attribute information and their requirements regarding the other two parties matched and compared for cost calculation. The benefits for the three parties from such selection of the advertisements are then studied so that the gain of the system as a whole will be maximized, with no lopsided advantages attributed to any single party.
Locations in which to insert advertisement information such as commercials within contents are called slots. The locations of such slots inside contents and the insertion time assigned to each slot are generally determined by the content provider in such a manner as to minimize any disturbing effects in the context of the offered content. The reason for that determination is that the content provider hopes to implement a framework in which to provide the best contents to subscribers under the circumstances.
Meanwhile, the lengths of advertisement information such as commercials vary from one commercial sponsor to another and from advertisement to advertisement. Given the variable duration of advertisement information, it could happen that the commercials, after being appropriately selected based on the cost calculation taking into account the attributes and requirements of the subscribers, content providers and commercial sponsors, fail to fit into the slots in contents.
If advertisement information were selected based solely on the lengths of available slots, the results would often be unproductive to the parties involved. That is, the inserted commercial could turn out to be unnecessary to the subscribers, not as effective as were hoped by the commercial sponsors, or contrary to the policy of the content providers in the context.
If advertisement information were selected based only on the outcome of the cost calculation, two things could happen. For one thing, the commercials to be inserted could overflow or fall short of available slots. For another thing, it is impossible to adequately consider the effects of repeatedly inserting the same advertisement information into one content or the scoring of commercials having different lengths (e.g., a 30-second slot is more likely be assigned two 15-second commercials than a single 30-second commercial).
Illustratively, as recent advances in the streaming technology accelerate widespread use of the advertisement distribution services customized to individual subscribers, advertisements are expected to diversify to such an extent that their volumes and types will grow explosively. Still, it is impossible to get the subscribers to watch all candidate advertisements inserted into distributed contents. What is needed is a system that calculates dynamically on how to assign advertisements to slots under existing display constraints (i.e., time constraints that apply conventionally when commercials are inserted into TV broadcasts, or display area constraints applicable when commercials are shown divided on a single screen).